Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A non-bailable arrest warrant chases a Union minister. A police party arrives from Jharkhand to search his North Avenue house in the capital and leaves after pasting a photocopy of the warrant on the wall. The morning papers carry photos of cellphone-toting policemen outside his evidently forlorn residence while Parliament is repeatedly, noisily, adjourned on the matter. Is it possible that somewhere north-west of Kolkata, in his secret hideaway, Shibu Soren, veteran of six Lok Sabhas, permits himself a small chuckle at having outwitted them all? The rest of us cannot take a break, however. As the riveting, and unprecedented, suspense drama featuring the absconding minister and the long arm of law plays out, there can only be unremitting outrage, distaste, alienation.
This is not about the innocence, or lack of it, of the minister, in the case of the killing of 11 people at Chirrudih in Santhal Parganas district of undivided Bihar, in January 1975. That will be decided in court. Soren8217;s supporters, including those in the Congress party, waste their breath entirely when they protest that their hero has been framed, that the charismatic leader has helmed the tribal movement against the land mafia and the moneylenders, that the longago case has been exhumed with a political motive. Those arguments are as irrelevant to the present scenario as the fevered speculation about what this means for the political calculus and the tribal vote-bank in the upcoming assembly polls in Jharkhand. The issue, now, is that a leading politician, a six-term MP, a Union minister to boot, is ducking and dodging the law and its due process, and has reportedly done so even earlier in this particular case. What must be seen as unacceptable and scandalous is that Shibu Soren goes into hiding like a common criminal.
